12/04/2007, 4:35pm, EST
Tuesday, December 4thDirector: Microsoft fueling HD wars
Microsoft is deliberately feeding into the HD disc format wars to ensure that its own downloads succeed where physical copies fail, says movie director Michael Bay in a response to a question posed through his official forums. The producer contends that Microsoft is writing "$100 million dollar checks" to movie studios to ensure HD DVD exclusives that hurt the overall market regardless of the format's actual merit or its popularity, preventing any one format from gaining a clear upper hand. Bay's own Transformers is available on disc only in the less popular HD DVD format despite his stated preference for Blu-ray. To the director, this is primarily a stalling tactic while Microsoft refines its own online-only technology.
"What you don't understand is corporate politics," he says in the response. "Microsoft [officials] want both formats to fail so they can be heroes and make the world move to digital downloads."
Microsoft is known to support HD DVD-only studios and promotional groups financially and offers its own add-on player for the Xbox 360, but has also shifted much of its attention to the download-only Xbox Video Marketplace, which will expand worldwide next week. The console service allows users to rent movies and buy TV shows at an HD resolution and with prices roughly favorable to physical stores.
Regardless of actual intent, the balancing effect spurred on by the sponsors of either format may create trouble for download rivals such as Apple's iTunes and Pioneer's SyncTV, many of which either offer their Internet content only in standard definition or back the Blu-ray standard. Apple has contributed to both Blu-Ray and HD DVD in financial and software support but has yet to introduce a computer or device with an HD-capable optical drive.
Filed under: computers, industry
Other story tags: Microsoft, blu-ray, HD DVD
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There is a reason they call them the 'format wars'. (Oh, and it's no different then the DVD-R vs DVD+R or VHS vs Betamax wars). If anything, you'll notice Apple doing the "wait on the sideline until the dust settles" move. No sense making another mistake and going with the wrong sister to the prom. They already did that with PCI-X, ADB, NuBus, and DVD-R (I think they started with -R, might have been +R, whichever they picked turned out to be the least favorite of the two).
BTW, what does the directory prefer? Blu-Ray. So would he be upset or yelling if the movie was only available in that format?
And is this really anything but another full-of-himself director pissed off because the producers, and not he, is calling the shots?
If they both are being offered, how are they 'failing'? And he's really giving MS a lot of credit. Sure, they once were really good at spinning markets and being able to grab a market, but that was a LONG time ago. If they were that good, the Zune would be the big media player and the iPod the just a distant memory.
Oh, and lest we forget, the MPAA is really good at screwing people over to suck customers dry of cash (and pocketing most of it). Do you really think they're going to just go "Oh, MS, you saved us! Here, take over this entire market!" You see how they react to Jobs and Apple.
Then again, as soon as someone makes a HD decoder, you know these format-war files are going to show up on P2P networks, making the issue null. The only thing really stopping dissemination in this vehicle are ppl's connection speed.
Time will tell whether this is BS, or an actual MS scheme gone awry once again.
McD